eMac Salvage

[Arthegall]

It's only a partial rescue, but it's my first one, so here it is.

My wife and I had an eMac in the first years of our marriage, and about five years or so ago, the screen started acting funny. I put it in storage, thinking someday I might fix it. At some point my wife decided it was time to say goodbye and put it outside in the enclosure where we keep the garbage. I couldn't ever bring myself to actually get rid of it, but it sat outside for more than a year, rain and shine.

Finally yesterday I decided to do something and pulled it back in. With my boys help, we opened it up to assess the situation.

It was wet:

And rusty.

And dirty.

That's mud.

As I got things disassembled, it became clear that at some point water had pooled in the bottom of the machine. There was a distinct waterline about 2 inches up on the inside. Fortunately, due to the solid case design, nothing higher than that had ever gotten wet except for the fan at the back. Also fortunately, the only thing down at the bottom is the optical drive.

The optical drive was a mess.

It had bugs in it.

Its integrated circuit board had been entirely underwater for an unknown amount of it, but the waterline was 1/4 inch below the laser diode assembly, so it wasn't an entirely hopeless situation.

The rest of the machine looked pretty much fine. As you can see, the upper chassis, logic board, and hard drive had never been wet.

Upper chassis looks good. Yes!

I disassembled the optical drive, cleaned it, and dried it out. I cleaned anything else that was dirty (mostly plastic stuff), and let everything dry out for most of the day.

Then I put it all back together and fired it up.

It's alive!

Yes! Sadly, the optical drive does not appear to work, now. It ejects disks upon command, but does not read them. I have an external, though, and it's an easy fix anyways.

Now I just have to figure out how to solve the video problem.

It's like a squeeze, except what's really happening is that the upper and lower corners all extend too far off the screen. The top and bottom margins are where they should be, but the left and right sides don't fit. It's the same problem we had before we put it in storage.

Any ideas?

UPDATE: And this morning the optical drive works! Running a clean install from the original CDs now.

[bibilit]

still working after rain and bugs !!

[Bunsen]

There should be trimpots somewhere on the analog board to adjust the width of the video. The only question would be where...

[CC_333]

Hi,

It looks like an 700/800 MHz model, yes?

My 700 MHz eMac (see this post) had this same exact problem before I was given a dead 800MHz eMac, whose power supply/analog board I decided to use to replace the one in the 700 MHz machine.

It solved the problem, but, as described in my post, it needs 15-30 minutes of warm-up time before it'll boot or reboot (it also dies in its sleep, which is another symptom I forgot to mention).

Unfortunately, I cannibalized the 700's old board, so it's a hopeless mess now (I removed a bunch of capacitors and stuff, probably ruining circuit traces and IC's in the process). It might be salvageable, but....

Good luck!

c

[techknight]

judging by the shape of the picture, it looks like a failure in the pincussion circuitry.

[Arthegall]

Poking around online, it looks like it may be a capacitor problem. Since capacitors are something I need to learn about, I'm going to try the hairdryer trick. Two questions: 1) Can I do it with the case off without risking electrocution, 2) Any suggestions on where the right capacitors might be located?

[Bunsen]

Holy cow, it lives! Many less adventurous folks would have declared it trash at the sight of all that dirt, water and rust. Did I read right that everything worked including the optical drive after drying and cleaning?

<snip>

[Bunsen]

<snip>

[Arthegall]

Wow. Just . . . wow.

[Bunsen]

<snip>

before reading the text glancing at the title and pictures alone, I thought you were going to list off a few items you salvaged from it. Not bring the entire thing to life. Good job comrade!

[Bunsen]

TheIanMan85:

That was incredibly rude and distasteful. Don't do it again.

uniserver:

Same goes for you.

[TheIanMan85]

I've already spoken to Bunsen and Arthegall via PM, but I'd also like to publicly apologize for my poor conduct. In hindsight it was rude and in exceptionally poor taste. Never again. This is a community I wish to contribute to, not be a burden on.

I don't wish sour this thread or steer it off topic any further so let's just put it in the past.
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Back to eMacs, I've always kind of wanted one to put next to my 600 MHz Snow iMac. Kind of as a big brother to it. A member here offered me a nice one for the cost of shipping, hopefully once I've got some spare cash I can afford the $70ish to do so.

Arthegall: Does your eMac still have the issue with the screen acting funny that forced it off into storage, or has that been fixed as well?